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Google Buzz works (sort of) on Android phones older than 2.0


I was trying out the buzz.google.com website today and was pleasantly greeted with the following page:

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Hmmmmmmm.

iPhone OS 3.0 was released on 17 June 2009. Android 1.6 (Donut) was released on 15 September 2009 and 2.0 was released on 26 October 2009. Essentially, Google is perfectly content supporting a relatively “older” version of the iPhone while it fails to properly load 1.6.

Well at least it is working now. Clicking on “Continue on an unsupported device” loads Google Buzz, however, you can tell that there is a certain lack of polish. The text inside the buttons don’t fit, the “show more comments” is hidden (instead all the comments are shown) and the options, such as location sharing, seem to be non-existent.

It is not a problem for me though for two reasons. Firstly, I barely use Buzz and my friends, after the initial use during the novelty phase wore off, have stopped commenting on my posts. Secondly, I know Google is out to make money and I am happy that by not being able to visit their page I am depriving them of whatever little income it generates.

So ended my rant.

4 comments

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  1. NTT

    February 22, 2010 at 1:34 AM

    Like you said I don't see why everyone is up in arms about this.. Buzz isn't like life changing.. I find it more annoying than anything...

  1. Abhiroop

    February 22, 2010 at 8:37 AM

    Any particular reason you find it annoying?

    It was a bit like Google Wave for me. After the initial novelty item feeling it was all a bit "meh" for me. I just didn't care!

    It seems as though Google is creating a huge number of programs that overlap a LOT and see what works.

    For example:

    GTalk/Google Wave/Google Buzz/GMail - all perform different functions but have features that overlap.

    Android OS/Chrome OS

    and so forth!

  1. NTT

    February 22, 2010 at 6:00 PM

    LIke what you said.. Too much overlap.

    Not so much of the Google sevices but of any kinda 'LifeStream' app. Twitter/Facebook status. It's annoying to updated and track all of them.

    As for Android OS and Chrome OS, they are different. Android is specifically designed for cellphones with integrated telephony stacks, ARM support and all. Chrome is more browser oriented, with different UI stack, and mainly x86 but also ARM support.

  1. Abhiroop

    February 22, 2010 at 7:34 PM

    Actually this is the article where I got the "overlapping tech" notion from: http://www.slate.com/id/2244441/

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